The present invention relates to smokable tobacco products and particularly relates to smokable tobacco products having improved properties.
The cost of raw tobacco has increased substantially in recent years to the extent that it has become an increasingly larger percentage of the overall cost of the smokable tobacco products. Efforts to better utilize tobacco raw materials and also to improve the final smokable tobacco product are thus becoming increasingly important. While it is desirable to provide a smokable tobacco product which may be formed of a lesser quantity of tobacco than utilized in conventional tobacco products, it is necessary to simultaneously retain and improve traditional product characteristics such as firmness; end firmness or stability; coal retention; density; pressure drop; number of puffs, etc.
Cigarettes are conventionally formed by threshing raw tobacco and cutting the threshed tobacco to reduce its size for handling by the tobacco product making or forming machine. Tobacco products formed by this traditional method utilizing cut tobacco are characterized by cut tobacco particles which are generally planar two dimensional structures each having a small roughly constant width and a variable dimension in length. The major axis of each traditionally cut tobacco particle in the conventional cigarette runs approximately parallel to the length of the cigarette tube. Once a particle obtains a certain length, little benefit in increased firmness in the cigarette is obtained by increasing the length of the particle. Thus, a limit is reached in conventional cigarettes where, for a specified firmness, a particular density or amount of tobacco is necessary.